


As With Ceaseless Voice

by viewingcutscene



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: A+ Parenting, Angels, Demons, Heaven, Hell, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:46:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7583956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viewingcutscene/pseuds/viewingcutscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At His feet the six winged seraph,<br/>Cherubim with sleepless eye,<br/>Veil their faces to the presence,<br/>As with ceaseless voice they cry:<br/>Alleluia, Alleluia<br/>Alleluia, Lord Most High!</p><p>The story of an angel and a demon, and how they fell in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All things are thine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thy will was in the builders' thought;  
> Thy hand unseen amidst us wrought;  
> Through mortal motive, scheme, and plan,  
> Thy wise eternal purpose ran.

The map is wrought of turquoise and clouded quartz, silver lines and chips of precious gems.  Onyx and fire opal bursts flare and fade as the war moves across the realm.  Considering the pattern of fiery jacinth marking seraphim battalions, Fiore decides to make repairs on the Lunar Cradle today.  The fighting’s since moved on from that quarter, but the nurseries remain empty.  The newly-created aren’t infants, but the caretakers are strangely sentimental creatures about their charges.  The Cradle houses the newest cherubs and thrones fresh from the Lord of Host’s fingertips, and facilitates the shock of transition from ethereality to corporeal being.  It makes Fiore queasy to see new thrones, their thousands of eyes all bumping into one another, or cherubim gleaming wet as if birthed from a womb rather than a word. Empty, though, the Cradle is nothing more than another damaged building awaiting his pantograph and compass. He gathers his tools, says a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, and takes wing.

The firmament of Heaven is bright and clear as glass, shot through with the golden glory of God.  Fiore loops wide around the knots of conflict, averting his eyes lest he catch sight of one of Lucifer’s wretched host. The Lunar Cradle curves like the crescent moon against the dome, silver spires clawing skyward, and curving protectively over its vulnerable inhabitants. At least it once did; at present, more than half of the spires have been torn down.  Fiore banks wide, and lands at the tip of the crescent.  Crumbled marble scattered across the plaza accounts for perhaps a third of the lost towers.  The phones have all been disconnected in the quarter, so he juggles his personal line out of the satchel while trying to find a space to work.

“Fiore here.  Yes, Silver Quarter.  I will need two hundred cubits of marble, one hundred cubits of one-talent weight quartz, and one hundred cubits of two-talent weight quartz to start.” 

At full capacity, it would take time for the quartermaster to fulfil his requests, and the virtues haven’t been operating at full capacity for quite some time.  Fiore works up a sweat clearing a space in one of the more intact wings of the Cradle, pushing marble dust, corpses and shattered stone off the edge of the plaza.  He uses the t-square to measure out a long rectangle on the wall, wedges fingertips into the lines and pulls it down to act as a table.  He’s knelt down to lay out his instruments, when a clatter of distant falling stone catches his ear.

Fiore folds his wings tightly against his back and listens intently, but hears nothing save the breeze touching the emptiness of the courtyards where slick, wobbly cherubs used to take their first flights, whooping for the joy of the God that made them.

The next few hours pass in comfortable silence as Fiore sketches out the repaired designs for the Cradle’s spires and major buildings. He taps the stylus against his nose as he considers the tops of repaired spires.  The old spires were very serviceable acorn-style finials, but surely something a bit more whimsical would be suitable?  The new thrones, in particular, would enjoy the challenge of spotting the different designs as they adjusted to their multitudinous sight.  On the other hand, there was no lack of work to be done in other areas of Heaven, as battles raged to and fro between the heavenly host, and Lucifer’s demons.  Some might accuse Fiore of lollygagging about, and he did not countenance that.  He sighs.  And not a coin in sight to decide things.

He decides to design every fifth finial as a pomegranate, and hide a small lamb in every eighth pomegranate.  Satisfied, he rolls up the finial designs and stuffs them into the carrying case.

Another scrape, close now.  Fiore whips around, sword drawn, but there’s no one there.  Laying the sword across his lap, he replaces his tools and papers into their case, and slides everything into a corner.  The phone, he keeps.  He presses his back to the wall and edges around to the arched door.  There’s a sound now, very faint – agonized, rapid breaths. He counts to three, and slides around the corner in a smooth motion, thrusting open his wings with a sound like thunder, sword angled across his body.

“Hello, there,” says the demon, sitting propped against the wall.  “Come to finish the job, have you?”  His legs are missing, along with an eye, but he holds a knife, blade out towards Fiore, quite steady, all things considered.  The demon smiles at him, and the whole of the heavenly host in Fiore’s heart - every praise, every prayer, every song - goes silent, blown out like a candle flame. Beneath the quiet, a wellspring of questions begins to bubble up under his breast.

The tip of Fiore’s sword clatters to the floor, and his heart goes with it.


	2. Ye boundless realms of joy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thou moon, that rulest the night,  
> and sun, that guidest the day,  
> ye glittering stars of light,  
> to him your homage pay.  
> His praise declare,  
> ye heavens above,  
> and clouds that move  
> in liquid air.

Fiore clears his throat.  “I intend to finish the repairs, but I suppose I must deal with you first.” He sheathes his sword, and crouches down in front of the demon, whose arm is beginning to tremble.  Fiore takes the knife and – loathe to discard a useful item – tucks it into his tool belt.  The demon is wingless, though not from any apparent injury.  It seems impractical to field soldiers that can’t fly, but he supposes that is why Hell must lose, in the end.  He scoops the demon up into his arms.  Startled, he opens his mouth to shout, or bite, and Fiore pins him with a glare.  “Don’t.”

He lays the injured demon down on the table, pressing him down with a firm hand on the chest when he tries to sit up immediately. Keeping one hand on the demon, Fiore searches through his bags for some strips of soft leather, scarce more than rags, padding for the miniatures he does in his spare time.  After the initial attempts, however, the demon subsides, chest heaving under Fiore’s fingers.

“Stay,” Fiore says.  He ties the scraps of leather tightly around the demon’s thighs – first one, then the other.  The demon hisses as a knot traps some of the thick dark fur of his legs.  It should really be shaved, but Fiore’s field aid knowledge is sketchy at best, functional only in so far as he understands the workings of bodies as elegantly crafted homes for the soul.  “Why don’t you just die?” he asks.

“I wanted a break,” replies the demon. “Death is a one-way ticket back to the frontlines and I’m so very tired.”

“These should really be cauterized, then,” Fiore says, sniffing the stumps.  They smell of things rotten, and hair burning, but he’s not sure if that’s the natural stink of demon, or putrefaction of the wounds.

“I’ll do, but I appreciate the offer.”

The sluggish flow of blood has stopped, at least.  Fiore wads up one last bundle of leather, buttery soft from wear, and jams it in the socket with the missing eye.  The demon grunts softly but doesn’t speak. “Why are you here?”

“Same reason as any of us,” the demon replies. “Fighting for the love of the Almighty, serving the glory of God, all that rot.”

Fiore snorts.  “Demons were created to serve Hell, and their own corrupted selves.  Do not taint the _Elohim_ with your association.”

“Ah, right,” the demon says, scratching his chin. Thick blood had dried there, and drifted down in patches as he scratched.  “And who created us, again?”  He laughs at Fiore’s silence.  “As rigid and unbending as your warrior brethren! Why did you even bother to dress my wounds?”

“As you say,” Fiore answers, agitated by this line of questioning.  “One less soldier for the battlefield.”

“Oh, wonderful! I haven’t been taken prisoner in ages.”

Ignoring this, Fiore picks the demon up to move him to a corner.  The table’s spoilt now, he’d never risk his papers on that surface, even if he spends the next three hours scrubbing it (and he does).  He felt safer with the soldier on the ground. 

The ambient light which suffuses the heavens shifts, bringing the day to a close with communal fellowship.  He must go, or his absence will surely be noted. He says as much to his captive.

“And if I’m discovered?” the demon asks.

Fiore bows his head, fists clenched.  The oubliette for prisoners was a well-guarded citadel deep in the centre of the Throne.  Captives were kept, as Fiore said, to thin the forces of the battlefields, where death was a temporary set-back, if that.  Hell did as much, and worse, to the prisoners of Heaven. Not to suggest that Heaven’s cells were pleasant – they were surrounded by a constant chorus of angels, singing praises to a God they couldn’t see, hear, or feel.  Many went mad.  But the thought of his demon, mutilated and chained to a wall, dying of blood poisoning or worse as the righteous chorus beat about his ears – Fiore shies away from the thought.  It’s not _right._

He could leave the demon here to his own devices, to die as he pleases, and come back to finish the repairs some other time.  After all, there’s no want of work.  This appalls Fiore almost as much as the first option, knowing he’s begun a job and plans to abandon it.

Snatching up the chalk, he draws a generous square around the demon.  Even freehand, his lines are neat as you please and straight as arrows, his writing small block letters: Fɪᴏʀᴇ's Cᴀᴘᴛɪᴠᴇ: Dᴏ ɴᴏᴛ Tᴀᴋᴇ

He drops the chalk and takes flight into the gold-threaded sky.


	3. Thou like adamant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THOU hast made me, and shall Thy work decay ?  
> Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste ;  
> I run to death, and Death meets me as fast,  
> And all my pleasures are like yesterday.

Deblanc shifts his hindquarters restlessly against the hard marble floor.  His knife is gone, and there’s nothing to hand save the bitty piece of chalk the angel left behind.  When he closes his eyes, he can still see the dazzling after-image of the creature framed by the hard copper and gold dome of heaven’s twilight.  While some castes of angels and demons had their common lineage stamped clearly on their features, Deblanc has empty air where they have wings; thick and heavy limbs, where they have long-boned grace; and scaled flesh while theirs is as smooth as glass.  They only trait he seems to share with the angel is pride, something far more difficult to breed out than wings, or hooves, or forked tails.  Deblanc idly walks the chalk along his fingers, considering sharing this observation with the angel when he returns.  It doesn’t occur to him the angel might not return. 

There’s a bone deep ache where his legs used to be, and the floor leeches heat from his body, despite the air being as temperate as an ocean breeze.  Compared to the loss of his legs – and try as he might, Deblanc can’t quite remember how it happened – his eye is a relatively minor nuisance, but he keeps turning his head this way and that to cover the blind spot.  Consciousness narrows to a fine-tipped point, and Deblanc dozes for a time.

When he awakes, the angel is standing there.

“I’m Fiore,” he says as soon as Deblanc cracks open his good eye.  “I brought supplies,” he adds unnecessarily, his arms loaded down with mats and baskets. Fiore unpacks with a brisk, business-like fashion, laying the items out within arm’s reach.  The nearest basket contains water, though no food.  Neither angels nor demons require food, but many rituals both above and below use food as a means of drawing together. Food is for sharing between intimates, not inmates.

“I’m-“ Deblanc begins.

“Don’t.  I don’t need to know.”

Well, that’s clear enough.  Deblanc mentally adjusts his expectations of survival, and takes a long drink of water. At least, he tries to – the first icy touch of the water rattles his teeth and numbs his tongue.  It blazes like diamonds down his throat. The first real pinprick of fear touches his spine.

“In old fairy tales, if you eat or drink anything from the land of Faerie, you’re doomed to stay there forever,” he says to cover his unease.

“Fairies aren’t real,” Fiore says.

“Most people would say the same thing about angels and demons, you know.”

Fiore gives a sharp, irritable shrug. “What concern is that of mine? I know I’m real.”  He sits back on his heels and surveys his handiwork.  With the amount of supplies, Deblanc is certain he could build himself a proper little lean-to, but he settles for wrapping himself with an old cloak.  He drags it over his head, masking the silhouette of his crown of horns slightly.

“I have work.” And he’s gone, just like that.

**The next day:**

“What’s it like, demon?” Fiore’s sitting on a little camp stool, a fair distance from the den Deblanc made for himself, carving something from icy stone.

“What’s what like?”

“Hell.”

“Quiet.” Deblanc considers the expanse of Heaven, where every part fits together so neatly, with its own music.  Even the broken-down rubble has its own dissonant chime to it, curving around the bright note of Fiore’s presence, like tiny marble moons round a star. “Once you tune out the never-ending screams of the damned, naturally.”

Fiore blows dust off his carving.  “Naturally.”  He casts a critical eye over the finial, before turning the same gaze onto Deblanc.  “Demons can’t hear the voice of _Elohim_.”

Closing his eyes, Deblanc leans back against the wall, feeling the resonance of stone, air, flesh and blood.  He smells bright metal and marble dust, chiming in the hairs of his nose.  Distantly, the tympanum of swords clashing, the melody of angels and demons dying. And through it all, a hollow space, hallowed.

“I can hear the space God’s meant to be,” he says.  “A great, clanging tangle of grapevines, woven through all creation. Heaven’s song skids off it, muted by something softer than lamb’s wool, slicker than fine oils.”  Even the absence is heart-rendingly beautiful. “It pierces me, but…” He thumps a fist on his chest.  “I’m only meat, and there it stops.”

Deblanc doesn’t open his eyes, but he hears the great tolling bell of Fiore’s leap into the air.

**The day after that:**

“I can’t come here any longer,” Fiore says.

“Very well,” Deblanc replies.  His legs are full of fire, and the sweet scent of rot is beginning to sour the air.

**The day after the day after:**

Fiore sits nearby, working furiously in a folio full of loose papers.  They don’t speak.  The angel’s agitation scatters his papers once, twice.  The third time it happens, he leans over to pick up the papers, face achingly near Deblanc’s, blinding him with sword-bright eyes, and cut-glass brow.  He turns his head slightly, so Fiore falls away into the greyness of his blind side, and therefore doesn’t see the angel collapse towards him, like a man about to fall on his sword. Hot desert breath and sharp teeth and sheltered lips press into Deblanc’s mouth, and he barely has time to return the kiss before it’s gone, and Fiore too. His heart stutters in his chest.

**The day after the day after the day after:**

Fiore alights on the platform, to find the demon gone.  His body remains, a small silver chisel jutting from beneath his beard. On the ground, with the piece of chalk left behind on that first day:

 ₕₐᵥₑ fₐᵢₜₕ, ᵢ wᵢₗₗ fᵢₙd yₒᵤ ₐgₐᵢₙ

₋ dₑbₗₐₙc

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a problem, and that problem is forbidden love


	4. Fast falls the eventide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless:  
> Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness:  
> Where is death’s sting? where, grave, thy victory?  
> I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

How do you love someone and watch them die a thousand times?

Fiore throws himself into a frenzy of work.  The Lunar Cradle is repaired in record time, and he comes back often.  Watching the thrones fly up high toward the spires, wheels turning thoughtfully as they examine the finials one eyeball at a time gives him particular pleasure. The dome of the Star Chamber, he tackles next, where a chunk collapsed inwards due to a rain of dead demons. These, he requests to be removed before he arrives to work.

His path across the Heavens blazes gold, back and forth in the Book stamped “Fiore”, if anyone cares enough to look.  A path more frenzied than Paul’s post-Damascene journeys, a Gordian knot of frustration writ across block and arch.  His work is more beautiful than anything he’s done before.  Gasps of awe and murmurs of praise reach his ears wherever he travels, and the glory of God burns brightly in gratitude.

He catches up to the war.  There are no more places to repair, nothing left to fix.  “Fiore,” says his friend, Machello, “Take some time to rest. Restore yourself in the love of _Elohim._ Your voice would be welcome.”

Instead, Fiore goes to the Seraphim. 

“I want to fight,” he tells the captain.

“Fiore,” says Aletta, reviewing the daily intelligence reports from the frontlines. “You know only Seraphim fight.”

“I can be useful! I can build siege engines…” He trails off, realizing the issue, as an amused smile blooms on Aletta’s face.

“If only we were fighting in Hell, I’d send you, and gladly. Alas, we’ve no use for your skills on the battlefields here.”

“Please,” Fiore whispers. “I want to do something.”

She puts a hand on his arm, muscles strained tight as cordwood from clenched fists, and he turns away from the kind look on her face. “Fiore, you need rest. You need succor. You’ve done such lovely work in the service of _Elohim,_ can you not take comfort from that?  It is your gift and glory.”

He comes back every day, until a nearby unit commander overhears his offer, and agrees to take Fiore on as a recruit. “The demons have grown cunning in their captive-taking of late.  I would welcome fresh bodies, no matter how unconventional.”  Fiore hears the underlying implication he’s an easy target, but it does nothing to wipe away the small glow of satisfaction at getting his way.

To the mutual surprise of the unit and Fiore, he avoids capture skillfully.  He dies a few times intially, which his new soldier compatriots assure him is common for everyone on the killing fields for the first time.  It’s the first time Fiore’s been killed through malicious intent, and the shock of dying unexpectedly and reconstituting at the forward camp causes him to be sick.  Sub-commander Luca pats him on the back as he recovers.

“It’s their hate,” she says. “It takes us all thus when we first encounter it.”

All orders of angels can fight, in some small measure, and Fiore is no incompetent, having worked with his hands from time immemorial.  He’s unique on the field, having come here through persistence rather than caste – though this is changing, as more and more commanders note the change in Fiore’s unit, and model their own by recruiting willing volunteers. Seraphim fight because they must; they worship through the clash of sword and spray of blood.  The fiercer the fighting, the greater the pleasure for both angel and God, who does not require blood sacrifice of the humans any longer, but prefers the smell and smoke of it to the homelier pleasures of garden and hearth.

He knocks aside a razor-tipped halberd, and drives his sword into the neck of the demon he fights.  He kicks the body aside, and comes face-to-face with Deblanc.

Whole, the demon is a marvel of chimerical balance.  A broad, scaled chest tapers downward, and fades into thickly furred, goatish legs.  Like all on the battlefield, he fights naked, and Fiore averts his eyes, but that leaves only the face to look at.    His face is plain, human-like, save the long earlobes and the sagittal crest of horns protecting the head. A look of horror twists his face.

“What do you here?” Deblanc says, low-voiced and fierce.

Though he imagined this many times, Fiore doesn’t have an answer.

“Have faith, I said! I would come to you.”  Deblanc raises the two swords he carries, the angel-forged one he must have stolen from a corpse shining bright against the black iron work of Hell. 

“You will never leave this killing field,” Fiore says.  “Save by one way.” He raises his own sword to bring it down, but Deblanc is quick, quicker than most he’s fought so far, and leaps away.

“Fiore!” comes the distant cry of Valente, his commander. 

“You injure me with your doubt,” Deblanc says.

“I shall injure more than that.”  Fiore twists away, spinning one of the swords out of Deblanc’s hands.  The clash of steel and silver gilt covers their words. Fiore lets his wing-guards take a blow from Deblanc’s remaining sword, as he decapitates the demon on his left.  The scales on the thick neck of the dead demon drag the sword out of his hands, leaving him with nothing but a small knife for protection.  He pants, barely registering Valente’s voice, nearer now and holds his hands out. “Or perhaps, you will have your revenge on me.”

Deblanc drives the sword towards Fiore’s unguarded neck, stops a hairsbreadth away from the pulse hammering beneath his jaw.  He uses the tip of the sword to turn Fiore’s face towards him.  “Please – “

He doesn’t get a chance to finish, as Valente sprints up and drives his sword deep into Deblanc’s exposed side, through the armpit, to erupt bloody out the other side of the demon’s neck.  Hot blood dapples Fiore’s face and drips from his lashes. Valente flips Fiore’s lost sword into the air with a foot, and Fiore catches it without looking.

“That was a near miss and no mistake,” says Valente, and claps Fiore on the shoulder.  “Capture is best, but if they’re like to take you, it’s better to kill them or die.”

“Yes,” Fiore replies thoughtfully, “Death would be better.”

The next time they meet on the field, Deblanc is prepared.  He comes with chains and two, quite literally, bull-headed assistants.  Three against one might have been even odds for a Seraph, but Fiore cannot hold them all off, even though he fights like a whirling storm of light and blade.  They manage to trap his wings, and Fiore is dragged from the battlefield before he can blink.

They march him through Hell’s base, a corruption blooming across an old Principality village taken centuries ago, a key foothold for Hell’s armies, near as it is to the mortal realms.  Many demons call enthusiastic encouragements to Deblanc, congratulating him on capturing another one of those “stuffy pricks”, or making lewd gestures at Fiore, who simply chooses to look through all of them as if they are not there.  Deblanc’s residence is a charred ruin in the eastern quarter of the town, but it boasts a roof and a door.  A demon of consequence then.  It does not escape Fiore’s notice that Deblanc is a prolific angel-taker according to the shouted epithets and curses.

The bull-headed guardians string the chains through a loop in the ceiling, so that Fiore dangles with his toes barely brushing the sooty floor.  “Leave us,” Deblanc says, and they do.  In the entire encounter, they haven’t spoken at all, and Fiore is not sure they could.

“If you meant to keep me a secret, you might have brought me in under cover of darkness,” Fiore says.  His face pulls awkwardly to the side, where he took a blow to the ear. “Half the army saw you bring me here.”

“If I meant to keep you a secret, I’d’ve not brought you at all,” says Deblanc in a mild voice.  He circles Fiore slowly, eyes taking in the incongruity of Heaven’s radiance in this blighted hovel. He’s forced to stand on tiptoe to draw even with Fiore’s face.  Fiore closes his eyes and turns his head, though it puts a terrible strain on his sockets.  The tendons are stretching slowly, but not fast enough to prevent their eventual dislocation. There’s a soft clink, and his arms drop to his sides like lead weights.  His calves pop as he lands on the flat of his feet. He crouches, feral, prepared for violence.  He’ll not be taken without a fight.

Deblanc stands over him, manacles and key in hand.  He throws these into the corner with a heavy clink. “I’ll have you freely… or not at all,” he says, not taking his gaze from Fiore’s face, battered though it is.

Fiore springs forward to embrace the demon, a snarl ripping from his throat. Deblanc puts his hands up in pure reflex, realizing too late Fiore has grabbed his sword.  He forces himself to watch as the angel, never flinching, draws the blade across his own throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, the response to this has been so sweet. Thank you, everyone! I will try to maintain a reasonable update schedule, as other obligations and inspiration allow for. Fingers crossed for a happy ending for our precious sons this Sunday.


	5. Till I betray'd myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why doth the devil then usurp on me ?  
> Why doth he steal, nay ravish, that's Thy right ?  
> Except Thou rise and for Thine own work fight,  
> O ! I shall soon despair, when I shall see  
> That Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,  
> And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

If Lucifer was still alive.  If God wasn’t so preoccupied with the failed Jesus experiment. If angels had an ounce of imagination, or demons an inkling of compassion, they might have been discovered.  But that was in another kingdom, and besides, Lucifer was dead. Deblanc and Fiore’s game of cat and mouse spans centuries.

They meet on the battlefields, over and over. If the angelic commanders take note of Deblanc at all, they account it to his prominence as a warrior of Hell’s vanguard.  His ability to evade capture becomes so legend among both armies, his troops stop jibing him about the angel that got away.  It’s Deblanc who comes up with the poison capsules under the tongue, and Heaven’s prisons become frustratingly empty.  The war presses inwards, closer to Heaven’s throne than ever before.

Deblanc is fighting back-to-back with one of his best commanders, Reule, the day it all changes.  Reule’s one of the few fighters who isn’t sinister-handed, and therefore over the decades, they’ve come to learn each other’s styles well enough to fight like a single creature.  Today, they fight together at the centre of a knot of angels, moving in a slow circular dance as the bodies pile up around them.  Reule nudges him as the knot parts for the arrival of a Seraph commander, hair braided and plumed with tokens of fallen friends and enemies.  Deblanc nods, anticipating the infrequent pleasure of solo combat with a worthy enemy.  He wipes his blade against the wings of a corpse by his feet, and straightens, coming face to face with the Seraph’s bloody fist. At his side, Reule staggers, hands coming up to clutch the hole in his jaw where his tongue once lay. An angel grinds the poison capsule into the gore beneath her foot.

“Take him,” the commander says, before Deblanc bites down on blessed escape and dies.

The new tactic spreads like wildfire among the angelic host, and the tide turns against Hell once more.  Only Fiore could’ve come up with a solution so brutal and elegant that Deblanc is torn between frustration over his dwindling troops and pride in his wayward angelic adversary.  Deblanc, feverish to find Fiore on the killing field, unsure if he means to congratulate him, kiss him or kill him, is captured with just such a method, and escapes the oubliette only by willing his heart to stop, requiring a fortitude of will he’s not sure he could muster ever again.  Even abandoning the poison pill premise does not wholly stop the attacks, which the angels employ with a perverse joy, and Deblanc is forced to beg hell for reinforcements, particularly ones with chitinous natural armour. 

Disguising himself as a corpse, Deblanc hamstrings a commander and drags them back to his hovel. Softening a Seraph for questioning is hot, tedious work, and Deblanc uses every trick he’s learned in a thousand years before the angel is ready.  “Where is Fiore?” he asks, cauterizing a wing stump with a torch, reeking of brimstone. 

“I know not the one of whom you speak,” the angel rasps.  With each breath, rib bones gleam like quartz through the torn flesh. Deblanc twists a finger into the gap between two ribs, and the angel screams.  “Truly! Do you know how many of us there are? I tell you, I do not know him!”

He tosses a severed tongue at the angel’s feet, and it lands in the congealed ichor with a sickening plop. “The one who taught you to do this, where is he?”

No matter how he applies his skill, the angel swears ignorance.  He learned the move from his captain, who learned it from the captain of another unit, and so on.  It cannot be anything but the truth, but each time he asks, he hopes for a different answer.  Eventually, Deblanc cleans his captive, dresses his wounds, and takes him to Earth.  With a generous donation to smooth the way, he leaves the angel in the care of Vincentian nuns running a hospice for vagabonds. 

“He’s not all together,” Deblanc says, tapping his temple before replacing his hat.  “It would be best to use the restraints at all times.  It would be a shame if despair led him to the sin of suicide.”  The abbess, clutching the heavy purse, nods and thanks him again.  He takes his leave, whistling, and decides to tarry in Paris awhile.

Liane greets him upon his return, and holds up a hand out to stop him from entering camp.  The uproar from within nearly drowns out her words.  “Baille’s come to take over command.  I’m sorry, Deblanc.”

“He is welcome to it,” says Deblanc. “Is he concerned I’ll fight him for it?”

Her fingers rasp over a patch of molting scales above her crest, and she shakes her head. “Your presence is requested below.”

“By whom?”  Who even has the power to request it?  He doesn’t speak the last out loud, unsure how widespread news of Lucifer’s death is beyond the warrior caste.  “For what purpose?”

“I don’t know,” Liane says.  She hunches her shoulders, flushed a sickly green.  They’ve known one another for centuries, long enough for Deblanc to know that she is deeply unhappy to convey a such a message.  Deblanc knows Baille only by reputation, a narcissistic arch-demon, formerly of Lucifer’s honour-guard created at the Fall.  It would not surprise him to learn Liane was chosen specifically because of their long-standing relationship.  What purpose humiliation if those who know you best are not witness to it?  If Reule were not still captive in Heaven, no doubt he would have been chosen instead.

“Goodbye, Liane,” he says, taking her hand to kiss. An old joke between them, from the very beginning of the war.  She doesn’t speak, merely inclining her head.  When she draws away to return to camp, Deblanc’s hand is full of little purple pills.

He walks deeper into Heaven and wonders if they can be absorbed through the skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was particularly hard/awkward to write, for some reason. I welcome feedback on it!


	6. Thou my best thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;  
> Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;  
> Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tow’r:  
> Raise Thou me heav’nward, O Pow’r of my pow’r.

“Fiore, come and see,” Machello says, leaning over the map of Heaven. Fiore puts down the bottle of oil and soft cloth he uses to seal his woodwork, and comes over to Machello’s side.  He pushes the magnifying lenses onto his forehead and peers at the place his friend is pointing.  A chip of mica floats across the map, weaving as if drunk.

“Watch this.” Machello turns the sundial back, and the blot reverses course, and then disappears entirely. A few second later, and some distance away, purple smoke boils into existence, coalescing into the same black shard.  The scenario repeats several times, sometimes slow, other times, more rapidly when groups of angels about their business come near. “What is it?”

“A spy,” Fiore mutters.

Machello releases the dial, and Deblanc’s marker skips and pops forward across the map, once more taking up the meandering journey across Heaven.  “Truly? How absurd. Does the demon believe they can infiltrate the highest orders of Heaven?”

“How am I to know the mind of demons, Machello? Try to not be a fool, for once.” Fiore gathers up the supplies he’d prepared for the day’s worksite.  His foray into the battle with Hell had been successful – almost too much, as the Seraphim had more voluntary recruits than they could field – but as the Heavenly host pushed the enemy back and reclaimed territory, the need for a head architect was plain.  Some of the reclaimed quarters had hosted demonic squatters for the better part of a century, requiring a great deal of work to restore functionality, never mind livability. 

He still managed to contribute in no small part to the war effort.  Some Seraphs, like Valente and Susanna, kept Fiore appraised of developments in the field, willing to see the value of someone who thinks with more than their sword. 

“It’s these pills, you see,” Susanna told him, helping to shovel rubble out the window of the dormitory Fiore was restoring.  “We capture a demon; they take this pill… poof! Dead. Useless to us, their blackened souls winging off before we can blink.  At this rate, you’ll be lucky to finish this job before they overwhelm us.”

Fiore grunted, muscles straining to push splintered wood and painted marble across the rough floor. “Can’t you use a similar method for your own troops, at least?” he said, leaning on his broom, sweat dripping freely down the small of his back. Susanna made a thoughtful hum as she digested the suggestion.

“We might be able to convince some units to adopt the poison pills, as a stopgap, but many see it as low trickery, beneath their honour as warriors. Not enough to turn the tide.”

Like a prophecy, Susanna’s words became truth before long. Fiore was forced to abandon the restoration project and fall back as Hell’s troops pressed their advantage.  The War Council granted the Virtues leave to sabotage anything in the demons’ path to slow their advance, and so Fiore bent his considerable talents toward weakening structures he’d once made straight and strong.  He’d cultivated the counter to the poison pills while trapping a neighbourhood that anticipated a night assault.

“Careful,” he cautioned the young archangel standing on the roof above. They were testing weights and wood temperaments to hide explosives and liquid fire above doorways, narrow alleys and other areas like to facilitate kill chutes.  Fiore tested with inert substances, naturally, but wanted accurate weight and time counts; some novices were apt to rush the testing process, leading to botched or faulty traps. He crafted cunningly wrought false ceilings and hatches, scoring them with fine slashes so they would fracture at the slightest jostle or with enough time, spilling their deadly payload upon the heads of unsuspecting demons.       

He timed the breaking point using his own pulse as a count.  Though Fiore owned several timepieces, and kept them in good order, he preferred the exacting tick of something created by _Elohim_. When the calculated time came and went, nothing happened. Fiore, frowning, went over to the trapdoor, feeling with his fingers for the weak spot.  He could feel the weight of the scrap marble they were using through the thin wood, which trembled, but held.  He stopped suddenly, seeing the curve of the neck in the gently sloped roof, and realized that if he had been thinking of the body as a temple at all, he would’ve seen the solution to the pills in minutes. 

“Attack from below,” he murmured, just before the ceiling gave way, and covered him in fine white dust. He called for automata to come and clean up before summoning Valente and Susanna to share his new insight.  They had all agreed to try it immediately.

Evidently, the system had worked, for not a few years later, he was summoned back to the dormitory he’d originally been restoring.  Fiore thinks furiously as he cuts through the air. Deblanc was responsible for the poison pill strategy, that much seemed true.  Had Fiore’s counter undermined the demon’s sway over his troops? Is he in exile?  Certainly not, if he is still in Heaven.  Perhaps Machello is right after all, and Deblanc is a spy.  He pictures the strong, stocky demon strolling the streets of the _sopraportego_ of Saint Peter, side by side with archangels gleaming pearlescent and golden in the morning light, and can’t suppress a snort.  On the other hand, among the bull-faced, lion-bodied Cherubim, Deblanc may fare better. 

Fiore navigates with his eyes closed, reviewing and rewinding the map in his mind.  If the demon stays on course, he will indeed end up in Cherubim territory – Fiore’s eyes snap open.  Fool, he’s heading for the Silver Quarter, where they first met.  Long since repaired to glory by Fiore himself, however, the Crescent now crawls with infant angels, and the Powers that watch over them, almost as heavily armed as the Seraphim themselves.  To say nothing of the automata guardians that were restored to freshly carved plinths to watch and record everything they see.

Far below, he spots a familiar outline sprawled on the ground, and banks sharply to land.  This one hasn’t been dead long.  He puts a finger into the blood and purplish foam oozing out of a cut in the demon’s out-flung arm and sniffs it.  The very same poison the armies have been using to escape capture.  Fiore allows himself a small, grim smile at yet another correct hypothesis, but it falls off quickly when he realizes the idiot is leaving a trail of demon corpses deep in unoccupied territory. His resumed pursuit is frenzied now, and when he finally spots Deblanc weaving across the territory in an exhausted stupor, Fiore dives out of the sky like a stooping hawk, and snatches him up.

“Stop, you fool!” he shouts, seeing Deblanc raise a hand to his mouth. “It’s just me.  What were you thinking?”

Deblanc’s reply is torn away in the wind of their passage, but he lets his hand drop as Fiore beats hard to gain altitude.  Something small pings off his foot, as the last of the pills fall out of the demon’s slack grasp, trailing away in their wake.  His body is rigid and trembling, underarms clammy with sweat, and Fiore has to wrap an arm around Deblanc’s mid-section to keep him from slipping.  The scales are smooth and cool against Fiore’s forearm, reminding him of the baking heat he felt the last time he’d touched a demon. This demon.  A curious sensation, like falling, grips his stomach.  Startled, Fiore stretches out his wings into a slow glide, seeing them strong and whole, and realizes it’s shame that curdles his belly, that he left a creature of God – even a demon – sick and dying, without comfort. 

He’s even more startled when warm drops patter down, catching on the golden hairs of his arm.  Deblanc is crying.   Fiore makes a decision, switching directions in mid-air with a half-twist, causing the demon to whoop, and clutch at Fiore’s arm.  He hopes he won’t have cause to regret it.

“It’s not far now,” he says.  “Try to hold on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for your kind comments, bookmarks, and kudos. Things are starting to draw together!


	7. O such a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Th'eternal glories gleam afar  
> To nerve my faint endeavor;  
> So now to watch, to work, to war,  
> And then to rest forever.

Fiore lands with flared wings on the terrace, feet touching lightly on sun-warmed wood worn smooth by many landings over the centuries.  He lets Deblanc go, and crying out, the demon falls to his knees. No longer sobbing, but quaking in fear. Gripping an arm tightly, he hauls Deblanc to his feet, one stumbling step at a time. It’s only ten cubits from railing to door, but Fiore’s back crawls the entire way, anticipating the trumpet of alarm. Inside the dim coolness of the interior, he bars the door.  Fiore’s never locked his home before, never had cause to.  Indeed, he has to cobble something together right there in the entranceway. In his gut, he knows locks are meaningless to _Adonai_ whose touch sees all and hears all.  It wouldn’t even hold a Seraph for more than a few seconds.  But it would be warning enough.

Deblanc stands upon his own two feet, leaning against the wall with a trembling hand pressed to his eyes. Fiore’s words cause the hand to fall away in astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “For upsetting you.  I didn’t think.” The words are drawn out and pinched off, like pearls on a thread, but they’re an apology, nonetheless, and the best Fiore can muster.

“You are apologizing… to me?” Deblanc asks, incredulous. His eyes well over again, and he slides down the wall, backside hitting the dark wood with a thump, and Fiore crouches over him in concern, laying a hand on Deblanc’s shaking shoulder.  The demon turns a wet face towards him, and he’s _laughing._ “You give me the shock of my life – which is saying something, for a soldier from Hell – and you _apologize_ for it!” He wipes his eyes, still huffing and snorting. “You’ve disemboweled me.  You’ve cut your own throat to escape me.  I’ve killed you a dozen time or more.  I’ve poisoned my own soldiers to thumb our noses at the angelic host. Truly, we must be one of God’s biggest pranks played upon the Universe.”

“ _Elohim_ isn’t much of a comedian,” Fiore says.

Deblanc sighs, laughter’s dying breath. “No, not at all.”  He remains where he sits, looking around the hallway, which has begun to glow with a soft light, reacting to Fiore’s presence.  “Is this your house?” Fiore nods in acknowledgement, still trying to cope with the whiplash rebound of the demon’s emotional outbursts.  Deblanc stares at him, eyes and mouth round as wheels. “My God, what have you done?”

“I don’t know,” Fiore admits.

They eat in silence in the small nook that faces the east, the clear pearlescent glow that Fiore loves best.  His own water and manna sit untouched as he watches Deblanc’s face go through tiny shifts of wonder and amazement at each bite. Finally, Fiore’s curiosity gets the best of him.

“What’s it like?” he says.

Deblanc shakes his head, licking his fingers to pick up the last few flakes from the low table’s glossy surface.  Fiore sits on his hands to stop himself from grabbing a soft cloth to scrub away the finger marks.  “It’s like it has everything that’s good in the world.  Coffee, and sweet water, and honey, and sunlight… a million things I can’t even name.”

“What’s coffee?” Fiore asks, causing Deblanc to laugh – but freely, unfettered, completely unlike his earlier bitter, ironic hysterics. “You know,” he adds before Deblanc can answer, “I never asked questions before you.”

“I don’t suppose you would,” Deblanc says.  “I’ve had coffee on earth.  It’s very… well, I can’t describe it, if I don’t know what you have had before.”

“Nothing.  I’ve never been to earth.” Fiore passes a hand over the table.  “This is what we eat.”

“Oh,” Deblanc sighs. “How terribly sad for you.”

Fiore can’t stop a frisson of indignity along his wing ridges, feathers tickling the back of his neck as they stand up.  “Says the one cut off from the glory of _Adonai_. Why should I care for your pity of me?”

Deblanc sets down his cup of water, and looks Fiore directly in the eye.  He doesn’t look away, though he wants to, badly.  But he cannot – _will not_ – shame himself so transparently by giving in first. “Do you know why I cried, when you captured me?”

“I did _not –“_ Fiore begins, but is ignored.

“When Lucifer was cast down, at the beginning of the War, God left him his wings, as a reminder of what he once had been.  I imagine that story is told far and wide up here, of God’s endless mercy.  But what you don’t know, I suspect, is that God also instilled in Lucifer – and by association, all denizens of Hell – a bone-rattling, heart-stopping fear of heights.”

Fiore breaks. He drops his eyes.

“You see, don’t you? To not only have once felt the golden caress of the Lord, through God, the vibrant song of all Creation – and then know it no more?  But then, to also have remembered soaring through emerald and jade skies, touching the very sun itself, and diving fathoms for the sheer joy of it, and know now that to do so again would give you nightmares fit to last centuries… that is God’s mercy.”

Fiore swallows, throat clicking around a dry patch. “It is a mercy, to those who have turned away from the breath of _Elohim_.”

“Death is a mercy, angel.  You know that as well as I.  It’s the same game we’ve played for many years now, you and I, Heaven and Hell. Don’t you think we would walk away from this War if we could?  Even the emptiness we feel up here pales against the echoing chasm that is Hell.  Any of us would rather batter ourselves to death against the loneliness and loss here, like moths against a lantern, than to waste away down there, never even seeing the light of Creation touch the faces of others.”

There is nothing to say to that.  Fiore bows his head, and they sit in stillness together, hearing the rising light chime against the crystal spires above them. He watches his hands curls themselves and uncurl one finger at a time, seeing the blue glow of God’s grace in every tendon flexing, every muscle bunching, every bone straining. He steals a glance at Deblanc through hooded eyes, and the light streaming through Fiore’s lashes casts a golden skeleton over the demon’s frame.  An illusion of the eye, only, and not the true grace given to creatures of Heaven, nor those mortals who choose it. Deblanc is like stone, careless of Fiore’s regard.  Only when Fiore closes his eyes, and begins to drift in the dozy morning light, does Deblanc shake himself all over, and speak again.

“I’ve been summoned back to Hell,” he says.  “I’ve put off answering for too long already.  We shan’t meet again.”

 _I’m sorry,_ Fiore plans to say, or _That’s too bad,_ or even, _I will miss the challenge you present._ What comes out instead is, “Can’t you stay here, with me?”

 _I’ve never asked questions, before you,_ Fiore said, and never one more important, more achingly beautiful to leave hanging in the air like a cantor’s pure note before the choir joins, than this. He feels, for the first time, the pain that seized Deblanc’s heart when he was swept up into the endless blue.

“Yes,” Deblanc says, “I can.”  He reaches across the table, and lays his hand, still slippery with condensation from clutching his glass, palm up. His claws are black, their edge honed to silvery sharpness, but Fiore doesn’t hesitate to put his own hand into Deblanc’s, the nails pricking the delicate skin of his wrist.

It is only appropriate, Fiore thinks, much, much later, to seal one’s doom with blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things have been hectic for me with work and home, so thank you for your patience, and kind comments, always. You have been the best audience a fic writer could hope for! <3


	8. Who shall give thee that grace?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> O, make thyself with holy mourning black,  
> And red with blushing, as thou art with sin ;  
> Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,  
> That being red, it dyes red souls to white.

The scales of war, all unknowing, are rebalanced as Deblanc and Fiore orbit each other within the confines of Fiore’s house. For as long as he has lived there, it has never been a home to Fiore, though if asked, he will talk – often for hours – about the things he loves about the little dwelling.  For him, home remains the space that waits for him among the holy throng, bathed in God’s radiant love.

And Deblanc never rested his head in the same place for long enough to begin to conceive of his own space, never mind something as alien as home. Something he is intimately familiar with, however, is a cage.

“You can’t prevent me from leaving!” he shouts at the angel two days later, half-irritated at his own desperate desire to leave, just to prove that he can, and half-amused at watching Fiore’s furious blush rise from the navel upwards as the argument goes into its second hour.

“Are you mad? Saunter out, as casual as you like, sightsee a bit? Maybe pop over to the Throne, say hello? If you leave, they’ll catch you.  Do you want to go back to Hell? Or be imprisoned for a few hundred years?”

“So your plan is to imprison me here, instead?”

“I thought you wanted to stay!” Fiore packs his work satchel with an impressive array of tools and implements, as finely crafted as any of the soaring buttresses or beacons adoring Heaven. The view from the back is, if anything, more distracting when Deblanc realizes the soft ruby flush tinging the silvery scapular feathers where they touch Fiore’s skin.

“I do want to stay! I just don’t want to be forced to stay.” He’d been saying variations on this theme for over an hour without any success, and hates the resignation in his voice now.

Fiore turns and glares at him.  “I am leaving for work. You will be here when I return.”

Deblanc sighs. “Or else what?”

“I don’t know,” Fiore replies, strapping his sword and phone round his waist. “But it will be _very_ unpleasant.”

“I’ll be here. I promise.”

“Hmph,” Fiore sniffs, “A demon’s promise.” But he leaves, as Deblanc knows he will. He has to; can’t arouse any suspicion by acting unusual.  Appearance is everything for Fiore, and for the angels who know him – well, it seems as though everything is about appearance.  He’s certain no one has seen the hidden depths the angel has but him. Deblanc’s mind skips away from considering the follow-up question – surely the Lord, who is all-knowing and all-seeing…? - and focuses on his own preparations.

True to his word, Deblanc is exactly where he promised he’d be when Fiore returns at the end of the day.  Threads of song still cling to the angel’s wings and hair from the evening worship, shimmying like tiny thrilled serpents.

On the table between them is a can.  In the hyper-reality of Heaven, it looks cartoonish, clumsy and poorly made. It smells incredible.

“Deblanc,” says Fiore. “What have you done?” He eyes the can like a bomb about to go off.

He tamps down the wriggle of pleasure in his gut at the sound of his name chiming like bells in Fiore’s mouth, but lets a small grin creep out, soft-footed as a hunting cat. “Would you like some coffee?”

It’s not anything fancy – Deblanc opened the first portal he could call with the least sacerdotal disruption possible – but brewing it with living water adds a certain potency he never experienced on earth.  It feels a bit like having your heart kick-started by a beautiful unicorn.

Fiore sits with his hands wrapped around his carved wooden cup, grinning fit to burst, his pique quite punctured with his first sip of coffee.  “Not bad, hm?” Deblanc asks. Nonchalant but inside, his atoms are zinging around, ricocheting into one another with tiny bursts of light. The coffee, the adventure of sneaking out, the warm peachy glow of pearlescent clouds framed in the window, and that _smile_ , gutting him like a glimpse of the crescent moon after lightless eternity. It’s all a bit much.

They finish the entire pot in one sitting as the light outside fades, deepening to royal purple and ocean blue, and the lamps inside, confections of crystal and glass, begin to glow, pinning golden halos on Fiore’s hair, Deblanc’s crown of horns. Their conversation is as light and airy; Deblanc attempts to explain the concept of notes to Fiore, whose vocabulary of taste and smell is, by necessity, limited.

“So humans explain things to one another,” he says, making little piles out of damp coffee grounds on the table, “through the lens of their experiences with other things?”

Deblanc nods. “Drinking this coffee, they might say it reminds them of burnt sugar, or nutmeg. A whiskey could be smokey, or peaty. A wine might have notes of pomegranate or lemons. It helps other humans, who might not have tried this coffee, or that wine, to decide if they might like it.”  

“Why don’t they just try it for themselves?”

Not sure if he’s up to the task of describing money-based economies, Deblanc says only, “Sometimes they do that, too.”  His nerves have calmed down somewhat, to the more mundane sphere of first-time jitters.  Not the first time he killed someone, no; he’s certain he was made with a bloody sword in hand. He can’t remember a time _before_ killing. The first time a soul was rendered unto his care, he remembers that.  The first time he realized the souls he tormented loved him, for doling out the punishment they believed to their dying breath and beyond that they deserved.  The first time he was given command of an army. 

The first – and only – time an angel, trembling with need and shame, kissed him, while he smothered the convulsions of his dying nerves.

He breathes sharply through his noses, once, shoving the memory away, and begins to tidy the table, wiping out the cups, and putting them away.  He reaches for the can, but a hand snakes out and Fiore grabs his wrist, unaware of how nearly he lost his fingers on razor-sharp ulnar barbs springing out in alarm at the sudden gesture. Coffee always did make him twitchy.

“I’ll find a safe place to hide the coffee,” Fiore says. He peers up into Deblanc’s face. “Why, whatever’s the matter with you?”

He sees himself, twinned and mirrored in the glass-lamp shine of Fiore’s eyes. Skin sleek and scaled as a snake, a broad nose, lips dark and leathery, like the wing of some fantastic bat. Dark ivory horns encircle his head, a mockery of a halo. The last time he was in France, he had seen the sculpted face of a great lady at an exhibition, crowned with rays, where a man with a thin little mustache enthuses about the United States, France’s great ally and friend. He wanders away after listening to the impassioned speech wondering if either nation realized they planned to erect a monument to Lilit, mother of demons, wearing a diadem of thorny branches in the name of enlightenment. He is a demon; he will always be a demon… but he always wanted to be more than just a demon. Always hoped to be more. Framed by the aureole of angel lashes, he dares more.

“I want very much to kiss you,” Deblanc says, “while I’m not in the process of dying by inches.”

Startled by his honesty, the lashes sweep down, shuttering his reflection away. The column of Fiore’s throat ripples as he swallows nervously.  “I didn’t think you remembered that.” Deblanc only watches him, holds himself steady. He’s a hunter not wanting to startle a stag come to drink at the brook; bow string drawn and quivering, with a heart heavy at the thought of taking something so strong and elegant from the world. Fiore’s hand still grips his wrist, though loosely now.  It is a matter of inches to close the gap between them, but it may as well be a chasm to Deblanc, wingless and terrified of the fall. Fiore waits to see what he’ll do, calm; a perfect _imago dei._ And reflected there upon that glory – a monster to make mirrors crack and mothers miscarry.

His bravery stutters and fails.  Just a demon after all. Deblanc slips his wrist from Fiore’s limp fingers. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Fiore shakes himself all over, as if waking from a dream.

“I can’t corrupt you. I can’t-“ Deblanc wheels around and leaves the room. But not before Fiore’s words reach him, softer than a sigh.

“I’m already corrupted.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahh, my precious babies.


	9. Valiantly, I hell’s wide mouth o’erstride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,  
> And stile blasphemous conjurers to call  
> On Jesu's name, and pharisaical  
> Dissemblers feign devotion.

The days pass, flickering and stilted in the wake of Deblanc’s confession, and Fiore’s soft despair.  The coffee becomes a daily ritual of sharing, its quiet ease the fulcrum bearing the weight of the rest of the hours full of alienation and fear.  Deblanc tells himself over again that it is for the best; they’ve escaped notice thus far only by being circumspect.  Any breaking of the universe’s true order would surely bring the eye of God upon them like a vengeful beacon. He tells himself this often, and never believes it.

He doesn’t lie to himself, or Fiore, about the nature of corruption, for the angel is right. By showing compassion to an enemy, caring for his wounds, talking to him like an equal, _kissing him_ … in short centuries, Fiore has broken the mold of angel more than any since Lucifer’s fall.  Perhaps even more so, for all Lucifer had asked for was the chance to have free will.  Fiore, despite his creation, his conditioning, has taken it. That the possibility is so unthinkable, so unnatural, is the only reason they could have escaped notice thus far.

It’s a bit stranger to think of a demon’s corruption, but no more than the truth.  Deblanc has lost all heart for killing, for torture, and mayhem. And yet… it gave him a purpose.  What is he to do now? Can’t return to Hell, can’t lead an army. He begins making more frequent trips to Earth whenever Fiore is away, bringing back different kinds of coffees and teas, flowers, foods.  He even manages to smuggle home a pair of chickens for _pollo con rajas_ but Fiore refuses to let them be slaughtered. He wakes up one morning with Valeria tucked up under one arm, and Serena perched atop his head, and thinks, _at least I didn’t plan to make roast capon._

Fiore, meanwhile, brings home small automata to repair, or carves figurines in the evenings.  Between the two of them, they create an elaborate chessboard that sprawls across the entire upper floor of Fiore’s home.  Most of the time, they play one another – Deblanc wins most consistently, but Fiore can pull the most surprising victories out of a stalemate or check – or let the automata to play with outrageous rules.  Fiore teaches Deblanc to reprogram the small machines so that the games are constantly evolving with phalanxes, landmines and air formation tactics. One particularly volatile game ends in Fiore trying to bandage an irate chicken’s scorched tail while soothing an inconsolable Deblanc.

“I’m sorry,” Deblanc says that night, hands wrapped around a bowl of rice pudding.  Serena, already finished her portion, crouches broodily on his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

“You’re lonely. You’re frustrated.  You feel trapped and purposeless.” Fiore ticks the reasons off on his fingers.  “You need to be needed.  You’re-“

“Point very much taken, _thank you_ , Fiore.”

“I’m not criticizing you,” Fiore says. “All of these things are understandable.  You’re gone from being a highly-ranked general, condemner of the damned and all-around bastard to refugee from Hell.”

“I’m still an all-around bastard,” Deblanc says.

“Too right you are.  But it’s a lot to take in. It’s understandable to feel… thin.  Fragile.” Fiore wipes a finger along the rim of the bowl, licking up the remnants of pudding, completely ignorant of his table manners or the effect they have on Deblanc, not to mention looking like someone who’s never felt fragile a day in his life. “I’ll wash up.  Why don’t you get some rest?”

Rest, rest, rest.  A preposterous panacea for a creature who needs neither sleep nor dreams. Deblanc obeys, though, going into the small room that became his, and shuts the door.  Serena hops off his shoulder to the dresser, _bok_ ing softly, and settles into a nest of curly wood shavings and feathers thriftily plucked from Fiore’s wings when he wasn’t looking. He’s begun to wear a track in the floor, pacing it each night from bed to doorway, and turning back again, questioning himself, questioning everything.

He’s kissed you before. _Yes, but he thought I was dying_. You _were_ dying. _He thought I wouldn’t remember!_ You let him go when you captured him in return.  _He doesn’t owe me for that. I don’t want that_. What do you want, Deblanc?

He climbs into bed, wrapping the puffy blanket around his head to drown out the voice. A cunning plan, which may work when the voice isn’t his own, echoing inside the chambers of his mind.  Also, it exposes his lower half, where sharp prickles on his thighs tell him that Valeria has decided to sleep in his lap tonight. He sighs, a smothered noise within the blanket prison, and tries to dull his thoughts enough to doze.

The problem with not sleeping or dreaming is that everything that follows is entirely Deblanc’s fault.

In spite of all intentions, he can’t stop thinking of Fiore. The touch of his long, cool fingers against Deblanc’s heated flesh.  The rough press of his lips, quick as a fever dream.  The marble column of his spine framed by those glorious wings Deblanc yearns to smooth his hands over, the curve of his ass, the strong arms that carried him so easily, the little frown line that connects his eyebrows when Deblanc is being particularly difficult…

The images come faster and faster, tumbling over one another and blurring together into a kaleidoscope of yearning.  The harder he pushes them away, the stronger they return, so Deblanc stops fighting, and lets them come.  He’s damned already, and has been since his formation. Thoughts are not words, nor deeds; his sense of honour and pride won’t let him partake of deeds, so he will indulge in thoughts. And such restless imaginings!

He kneels at Fiore’s feet in supplication until the angel crouches before him and raises him up. Kisses him on the mouth in benediction, in love, with sweetness piercing Deblanc’s heart like a spear.

Or:

He pushes Fiore on his back, trapping his wings against the floor, and straddles him. He presses a hand against the broad planes of Fiore’s chest, in such a way that must strain his back terribly, but he only watches Deblanc, eyes full of trust and the deep, deep blue of Heaven’s dome. Satisfied and humbled, he lets go, and Fiore tumbles him to the floor to possess him.

Or:

Fiore takes him into the sky on his powerful, pearlescent wings.  Terror is a fist in Deblanc’s gut, but Fiore murmurs into his ear, “I won’t let you fall,” and the fear falls away in the face of powerful trust.  They cling to one another, far above the ground, strung taut with arousal and love, and despite growing slippery with sweat, Fiore does not let him fall.

Deblanc arches his back as his hand drifts across his belly.  At this point, Valeria has decided she’s had more than enough disturbances to her rest, and pecks at him viciously.  He jerks his hand back so that her second attack misses it, and instead strikes the tender flesh beneath. With a startled howl, he rolls off the bed and hits the floor with a bone-jarring thud, while Valeria flutters her wings and scolds him at the top of her voice.  Deblanc fights with the blanket still tangled round his head and shoulders, while his free hand cups his wounded balls.

Abruptly, the blanket is torn away.  He blinks in the sudden glow of light, the red haze of pain and anger clearing to find Fiore peering at him, eyes wide in astonishment. He’s got Valeria held tightly in his arms, who preens and mutters to herself as Fiore takes in the scene before him. Deblanc realizes he’s on his knees, cursing a blue streak, with one hand wrapped round his cock. Not quite as he imagined it.

“What in Heaven’s name are you doing?” Fiore asks him.

Deblanc drops his hand, as nonchalant as possible.  “I don’t know.”

There’s a long pause, in which Deblanc reconsiders his vow to never return to Hell.  It might, after all, be less embarrassing. Then, to his amazement, Fiore starts _laughing._

“You should see your – I mean, the whole thing, really, but oh Deblanc, your face right now!” Fiore covers his face with his hands and sinks to the floor, shoulders shaking with hilarity.  Deblanc, nonplussed, sits back on his heels.  By the second or third time Fiore stops laughing – “I’m fine, it’s okay, really, I don’t know what’s come over me” – but starts up again as soon as he looks at Deblanc, he’s laughing too. It eases the snarl of embarrassment deep in his belly.

Finally, the both wind down, wheezing and wiping their eyes. The restlessness and anxiety that’s plagued Deblanc since he arrived has faded, a thin white noise, far away, that he finds much easier to bear. The easy smile that Fiore wears makes him even more beautiful, and Deblanc leans over and kisses him. If Fiore had flinched, or frozen, it might have killed the fragile spell of contentment that filled the room, but he doesn’t. Instead his mouth opens under Deblanc’s, and his hands come up to Deblanc’s face, framing him like a treasured painting. It lasts hours, it lasts forever, it doesn’t last long enough.  When they break apart, Fiore leans his forehead against Deblanc’s.

“What are we doing?” Deblanc says.

“I don’t know,” Fiore replies.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *_____* finally


	10. Countenance divine, shine forth!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bring me my bow of burning gold!  
> Bring me my arrows of desire!  
> Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!  
> Bring me my Chariot of Fire!

Safely abed, Fiore rests his chin on Deblanc’s chest, arms wrapped tightly around him and wings sheltering them both like a canopy of glory.  His mind races through a carousel of emotions: relief, fear, concern, excitement.  The centre, the axis about which they all whirl, however, is joy.  After centuries being out of alignment, he’s finally snapped back into his rightful orbit.  Only…

“Stop,” Deblanc mutters.

Fiore tilts his head to look at him.  “Pardon?”

“Stop thinking. Stop winding yourself up for nothing.” Deblanc reaches for Fiore’s hand, up by his shoulder and holds it.  “Just enjoy the time we have.”

“That’s it, though, isn’t it? What we’ve done –“ Fiore stops. _Be honest,_ he scolds himself. “What we’re doing, it’s outside the order of things.  So far outside, we’ve exited the universe entirely.  We’ve stolen this.  We’re on God’s time.”

Deblanc snorts. “Haven’t you realized? We’re on our own.”

The thought is more comforting – and more exciting – than Fiore wants to admit, so he stays silent, and eventually, he rests.

In the morning, things return to their relatively normal, established routine.  Fiore departs for work, and an anxiety that he hasn’t felt since first taking Deblanc in bubbles up as he closes the door to his home, and launches into the sky.  Not wanting to hurt his feelings, Fiore crept out of Deblanc’s room early, and scrubbed up till his skin tingled, lest some high-ranked Seraph or Throne catch the demon’s scent. For a few moments, he longs to turn back to the safety of a roof and four walls around him, but he thinks of work and presses on.

It’s a project he’s been looking forward to since he was announced lead and given a team of apprentices to help. Fiore’s been waiting to start until his more mundane work had been completed, and today he could finally begin.  Tomas, his lead apprentice, greets him when he lands at the site. Not originally one of the Virtues caste, Tomas is easily one of the best sculpturists Fiore has seen in centuries, but the fierce golden eyes and feathered ruff make him stand out among the statuesque Virtues apprentices.

“Master Fiore,” he says, bowing.  “We’ve been preparing the wall.  Gabriella is here to tell her story, so you can make the preliminary sketches.”

Fiore thanks Tomas, pleased at the smooth plaster wall the apprentices have built, before the final work is done in marble and quartz. “Very good.  Tomas, appoint a runner to take my sketches to the wall, so you can begin transferring to the plaster model.”

Like most of the messenger angels, Gabriella’s angelic nature is only evident in her presence here today. She’s tall, with tawny brown skin, and deep brown hair worn short.  She can use glamours to terrify or awe, like any angel, but _malachim_ are closer to humans than most. There are on-going arguments about whether flight or translocation is the superior form of travel.

“That boy adores you, Fiore,” Gabriella says by way of introduction.

“Gabriella,” says Fiore, as he gives her a welcoming bow – not too deep, as is only proper, though he both likes and respects her – and schools his face to its usual blankness.  “You’ve been too long among the humans.  We adore the Lord.  Tomas admires my work. Perhaps he respects me as a leader, or aspires to my skill.  Nothing more.”

Gabriella _hmm_ ’d in a knowing way, but lets it slide.  “Anyway, we’re here to talk about me, aren’t we?”

“Peripherally.”  Fiore balances a sketch pad on his knee, a fat wedge of charcoal in one hand. “Tell me about the Christ’s early life.”

As Gabriella unspools the thread of time when she was messenger and watcher over the growing savior of mankind, he sketches scenes of a family, small at first, but growing with each passing year.  Pages are picked up by the runner as soon as he tears them free, eager to cover the fresh sheet underneath with images of a mother, exhausted and terrified, cradling her baby.  Or one of her carrying him on her back as they travel on foot, farther than they’ve ever been from home. There’s one of a boy up in a tree, flinging olives down to his brothers and sisters as they laugh below, holding up baskets in a race to catch the most.  Fiore’s favourite is the one where that same boy, hovering on the malleable cusp between childhood and adulthood, is carving a small toy from wood, an intense frown of concentration on his face. For him, it’s the one that makes him understand, the tiniest bit, why people followed this man, bled and died for him. Why they loved him.

Nothing like this has ever been seen before in Heaven.  There are marvels to spare – glittering spires thrusting skyward, gates carved with the minutest details, tiles that fit together as if they were grown. Even some of the great events in humankind are depicted here. Moshe and the tablets; Adam and the serpent; the flood that swallowed the earth. Fiore himself worked on many of these things. These unpretentious scenes of kinship are something new.

By the time Gabriella finishes, and the last sketches are taken away, the earlier part of the model has already seen some work under Tomas’ careful eye.  His style is austere, but sharp and beautiful as a talon. He’ll surpass Fiore easily when he takes over the Master’s apron. Fiore touches the roughed-out Maria, sweaty curls clinging to her cheeks, as she clutches the fingers of the sleeping baby in her lap, and his hand comes away dusty with plaster.

“It’s exquisite,” says Gabriella at his side.

“Yes, it is.”  Fiore says, feeling like they’re only talking past one another. 

“I’m for a soloist role in tonight’s Acclamation, so I have to get ready.  Will you be in the chorus?”  Fiore shakes his head, though he knows he must attend soon, to avoid talk. He just can’t tonight – he feels too raw, too transparent.  He’ll make a mistake. She shakes out his cloak for him while he packs his satchel, and wrinkles her nose.

“Ugh, this reeks of demons… this isn’t the cloak you wore during your war games, is it?”

Fiore whirls around, scattering tools off the bench. He snatches the cloak from her fingers, and presses it to his nose.  Sure enough, it smells like home – coffee and chickens, amber and brimstone. He feels sick. How could he have made such a stupid mistake? The cloak dangles from his fingertips, like a contaminant, and he must look truly wretched, because Gabriella thrusts it into the rubbish pile. A scurrying apprentice, torch in hand, comes over to finish burning the lot before nightfall.

“Poor Fiore,” she says, putting steadying hands on his shoulders.  “Was war really all that bad?”

“You have no idea.”

He waves off her offer to help, and finishes packing his work satchel for the trip home with shaking hands. He holds a debrief with his apprentices, then sends them off to chorus, or to the barracks, as is his custom at the end of each work day. There’s nothing Fiore would rather do than race home ahead of the storm he’s certain is bearing down on the tiny shelter he calls ‘home’ in his heart, but that is the one thing he cannot do. If no one suspects anything yet, tearing away into the sky like a ladybird called home would spark questions. 

Fiore douses the ashes and flies home, leisurely, counting to a thousand and back down to one again. He’s barely closed the door before he caroms down the hallway into the small eating nook they take coffee in. Deblanc is sitting at the table, a finger holding his place in a leather-bound volume.

“Hello,” Deblanc says. “I brought back some books. I thought you’d like some of the fairy tales. Ho-ooof!” Fiore lifts Deblanc into his arms in a crushing embrace, cutting off his question. He holds Deblanc tightly – coffee and chickens, amber and brimstone – until the shaking stops. “It’s nice to see you too,” Deblanc says when he regains his breath.

Fiore touches the manuscript, which is printed with woodcut illustrations; it’s open to an image of a young woman throwing herself off the bow of a ship. It smells new, the tang of ink and the raw leather binding. “We’ll be caught, someday, won’t we?” He lifts his eyes to meet Deblanc’s.

“Yes,” says Deblanc. “Most likely.”

Marking the page with a feather – there’s always some near to hand since acquiring Serena and Valeria – Fiore closes the book. The leather is warm, almost alive under his hand. He can still feel the essence of the animal it once was.

“Bed first,” Fiore says. “Then you can tell me a story.”

He smiles, fierce and feral, when he takes Deblanc’s hand and the demon shudders.


	11. He who loveliness within

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Then you have done a braver thing   
>       Than all the Worthies did ;   
> And a braver thence will spring,   
>       Which is, to keep that hid.

Fiore’s hand is a vise, binding Deblanc to this plane, leading him where he willingly would leap without looking. His smile is a moonlit scythe, cutting out the core of Deblanc’s heart, and filling the space with blood-hot longing, sharp and sweet. He is led to the door of Fiore’s room, and stops at the threshold.

“Is this truly what you want?” he asks Fiore. The bones of Deblanc’s hand ache as Fiore releases it and turns his fevered gaze on him. “You know what I want. What I’ve always wanted.  I’ve never hidden it from you.”

Fiore grasps the door frame, and flares his wings, like a hawk puffing itself up before a threat, staring at Deblanc. He is trapped as if caged, though the hallway is empty behind him, but the shadow of those wings, the glint of the hunter within those eyes has pinned Deblanc as efficiently as a spear thrust. What a magnificent demon Fiore would have made! Unleashed by his fears, he plays on Deblanc’s desires and sins like an expert. The damned would line up out the gates of Hell to be punished by him.

“I want to be inside you,” says Fiore, in his deliberate way, but the pulse hopping under his jaw betrays his own excitement.

Deblanc forces himself to relax, letting out a shuddering breath, though he is wound tighter than a spring and rock-hard with lust. “Take me, then.”

The room is as clean and spare as Fiore himself. He guides Deblanc to the bed with a hand in the small of his back, resting just where the scales shade into the soft fur of his buttocks and legs. There is only a long length of linen covering the frame, soft as silk with age. His legs give out as he sits, and the edge of the frame strikes the back of his legs. Fiore stands before him, marvelously nude, having shed his work satchel somewhere between the entryway and the bedroom. He wants to look, to take his time, but he fears he’ll go blind. The room is lit with a low, ambient glow like a banked fire, gilding Fiore’s hair and wings, with muscle and sinew etched in shadow.

With a low gutteral moan, Deblanc reaches out and pulls Fiore towards him, burying his face in the crook between groin and thigh. Soft hair brushes his cheek as he closes his eyes and inhales deeply to calm himself. Fiore smells like hot, sun-baked stone and warm vanilla, like song made flesh, like home. A hand touches his head, tentatively, stroking the crest of horns there. Deblanc looks up into the face of the sun.

“Take those off,” Fiore says.  He sounds somber, but his eyes are warm, as if wearing a smile that hasn’t quite reached his lips.

Deblanc touches the leather bindings wrapped round his forearms, meant to protect Fiore and the chickens from the poisoned spines there. “If I lose control, they could hurt you.”

Fiore kneels, bringing his face level with Deblanc’s.  “You will. And they won’t.” He follows it with a kiss, firm and commanding, but his thumb brushes Deblanc’s chin with a tenderness more terrifying than everything that’s come before. “I trust you.”

Moving languidly, like an underwater dreamer, he unwinds the guards, and lets them fall to the floor.  Fiore presses him back onto the bed, cloaked in feathers, and falls on Deblanc like a starving man, kissing his jaw, his neck, his mouth. Deblanc moans through his clenched teeth, holding his arms tight against his side. Fiore grinds against him, rubbing himself against Deblanc’s thighs, and any good intentions to be careful are flung right out of his head as he grabs Fiore’s hips. When the angel draws back slightly, he steels himself against the loss, the heartbreaking disappointment of having gone too far, too fast.

Fiore’s propped himself up on his hands, frowning down at himself. “I never asked,” he says.  “This form is my usual one, but I didn’t think it might not be to your taste.  I can change if you prefer something more – “

Deblanc chokes off a laugh. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect.” He grips Fiore’s ass tight, feeling the corded muscle beneath, and tugs him closer. “Come _here._ ” The touch of Fiore’s cock sliding against his own causes him to throw his head back, exposing his neck, which Fiore traces with his mouth.

Tangled and sweating, they writhe on the sheets in a dance both awkward and timeless. Deblanc’s been with many before now – after tonight, it’ll always be capitalized in his mind, _Before_ \-  demons and humans alike, but never with someone whose heart touched his own.  Fiore’s own lack of experience makes him fearless, unaware of the stigmas and stereotypes that one absorbs when in close proximity to humans and their endless thoughts of sin.  He touches Deblanc everywhere, peers at everything in awe and wonder. He laughs in sheer delight after Deblanc comes for the first time, gripped in his fist; holds him, kisses him, wipes him clean with mouth and sheet, while Deblanc watches through hooded eyes, lazy and satisfied.

“Now you,” Deblanc says, reaching for him. Fiore lifts Deblanc easily and settles back onto his heels, drawing him close.  Fiore eases into him, causing him to gasp and harden again, already. He feels tender and raw, and emotionally, he’s not sure he can handle another orgasm so soon. Deblanc closes his teeth over Fiore’s collarbone, praying for a quick end, but Fiore only settles his hands on Deblanc’s ass and moves in the slow, undulating rhythm of palm fronds in the breeze. He twines his arms round Fiore’s neck, brushing his fingers through feathers where they meet muscled shoulders. Fiore’s breath is hot against him as he moves with increasingly jerky motions, until he presses his forehead against Deblanc’s chest, and cries out wordlessly. Deblanc clings to him, whispering, “It’s alright, my dear, my heart,” but the slender thread of his control breaks when Fiore comes in one hard spasm, and he is lost once more.  Before Fiore’s wings close tightly around them both, he feels a surge in Heaven’s ever-present song, but it passes and all he can hear is the hammering of their hearts, beating within the small space between them.

This time, Deblanc tends to Fiore, who lies back with his arm thrown over his eyes, a smile playing across his lips. He kicks the soiled sheets to the floor, and curls up under Fiore’s other arm.

“You promised a story,” says Fiore, who can barely focus enough to speak.

“I did.” Beneath Deblanc’s fingertips, he feels the heartbeat slow and steady. The thread of glory that touches everything around him _but_ him coils around Deblanc’s wrist, tentatively seeking, like a snake tasting the air. “One day, something that was never meant to happen happened…”

He lies alert for a long time after Fiore falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which they Do It.


	12. Alas! alas!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As well a well-wrought urn becomes  
> The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,   
>     And by these hymns, all shall approve   
>     Us canonized for love ;

The days take on a certain softness, polished by love like river stones. Fiore, exulting in his work, rises each day in the dim pre-dawn, and leaves to bathe and dress elsewhere. Far from being insulted, Deblanc insists on it after hearing about Fiore’s encounter with Gabriella at the work site.

“I froze,” Fiore admits, when he finally tells Deblanc about the incident a few days later. “I couldn’t think up a good lie on the spot like that.”

“You can’t lie at all.”

“Luckily, Gabriella was distracted by her soloist role that night.  She’s a bit vainglorious, you know, for a messenger.”

“Perish the thought,” murmurs Deblanc. “You’re not used to thinking clearly while afraid, whereas it’s my essential state of being. Don’t lie.  Just don’t get caught.”

Nettled, Fiore looks down at the cup in his hands. “I always think clearly.” 

Recalling a particular incident from the night before involving knotted bedsheets, a blindfold, and a great deal of begging, Deblanc grins wolfishly in reply, causing Fiore to flush.

There are stories, too.  Deblanc tells him the story with the haunting picture that caught Fiore’s fancy that first night they lay together.  Fiore’s head is a comfortable weight on his lap as he holds the book in one hand and brushes the hair off Fiore’s forehead with the other. By the time he finishes the story, a deep frown cuts a chasm into Fiore’s brow.

“It doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t she kill the prince and save her life?” he asks.

“Because she loved him!”

“How many times have we killed each other over the years?”

Bemused, Deblanc begins counting, then stops himself. “It’s not like that for humans, they don’t come back.” He remembers who he’s talking to. “They don’t _usually_ come back. Besides, I rather hope we’ve moved beyond the stage of killing one another by now.”

Fiore sits up, and snatches the book from Deblanc’s hand. “The prince treated her terribly, like an amusing pet or toy. His death would’ve been just. I suppose if you began treating me like that, I would kill you a few times.”

Deblanc doesn’t know whether to be flattered by Fiore’s unspoken compliment or alarmed by his mercenary approach to relationship problems. He settles for the middle ground – annoyingly obtuse.  “You said fairy tales aren’t real. I’m surprised you’re taking it so seriously.”

“I said _fairies_ weren’t real,” Fiore replies, proving himself the reigning champion of annoying obtuseness. “That’s not at all the same.”

“Mermaids aren’t real either, you know.”

“Let’s pick another story.”

“Fiore…” Deblanc touches the nearest shoulder, bunched with tension. “It’s just a story. It’ll be alright.”

“No, it won’t,” says Fiore, twisting towards him and putting the book down on the bed between them. “It’s a prophecy. We should’ve stuck to our own kind.  Death – true death - is the only atonement.” His eyes are dark as a starless twilight sky, as if he’s already one step into the chaotic void absent God’s presence.

Deblanc sweeps the book off the bed. The sound of it slamming into the wall startles Serena into emitting a grumpy _squawk._ “Bullshit.” He grabs Fiore’s upper arms and shakes him, willing him to acknowledge his presence.  When Fiore’s eyes finally lose that glazed look and focus on him, he wants to weep. “We can write our own story.”

In answer, Fiore gently and firmly presses Deblanc down onto the bed.

In such a manner do the days pass.

 

Deblanc rarely leaves the house, unwilling to put Fiore at risk for the sake of his own amusement.  He throws his energy into finding stories that Fiore _does_ like. Cinderella is a success (Fiore nodding in bloody-minded satisfaction as the step-mother gets her eyes pecked out); they both agree they hate the story of the woman who turned into a bear (“What kind of mother begs her son to passionately kiss a bear and stays to watch?”); and that they both prefer the absurd tales about enormous smoking caterpillars and magical baked goods above all else. 

He takes apart automata and teaches them how to do things other than fight. He scrounges enough parts for a mechanical chicken to befriend Serena and Valeria, to their displeasure. A modification that lets the automaton bird spew grain from his mouth alleviates much of their unease through sheer greed. Efforts to create the cast of a shadow play stump Deblanc, however, when the machines all wind down long before the story sequence is complete.

Each day Fiore leaves before dawn.  Each night, he comes home past moonset, spending all his time outside work at worship, to allay suspicion, though Deblanc suspects he genuinely missed the communal praise and prayer and does not want to admit it. The scant hours in between are filled with stories, laughter, and love.

And every night, as they lie together, sweaty, sated and at peace with themselves, Debanc watches the brilliant filaments of glory that cling to Fiore creep across the threshold where their skin presses together. With every day that passes, he burns brighter, with the long-absent song of God touching the core of his being like a masterful harpist. Fiore doesn’t seem to notice the loss, and indeed, it appears to be no loss at all, for every thread that crosses over is replaced by seven more.

He understands now why so many stories of humans encountering angels begin with “Do not be afraid”, because the love of God is a terrifying thing to bear. They burn together, clinging to one another and whispering endearments, and Deblanc is so very afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all, as always, for the kind and encouraging words. Please be patient with the staggered pace these days - between various commitments, I can't promise an exact schedule but I can say I don't plan to abandon this till it's done. <3


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